Freelance Library Development

I think selling license is the best way. Just like B4A, if I think a library is good I'll buy its license (for 1 or 2 years...). But you guys (developers) must introduce/advertise how good your libraries are first

With all due respect to XverhelstX who, as he has indicated, is a college student looking for ways of funding his future endeavors, I'm a bit concerned about the "slippery slope" effect of proposing development of libraries for B4A for a fee. To be clear, I have great admiration for those who have mastered the obtuse art of Java and Eclipse in order to produce these libraries. And I also recognize the amount of work required to do so can be enormous. But might this be the first step in a process which could be detrimental to the purpose of this Forum; which is a "free and open exchange" of information to help to fellow developers in application development of B4A? Perhaps further down the road, some might provide solutions to problems presented on the Forum for a small fee.
I, for one, have been extremely thankful to the Andrew Grahams, Martin Pearmans, Alain Bailleuls, Markus Stipps, and so many more including Tomas Verhelst (XverhelstX ) for their library creations that mean so much in App development. And the Form members like Klaus and others who have provided insights and answers to numerous member questions!
Again I mean no disrespect in this matter. My concern is for continuing the wonderful work of this forum for all of the members.

AndEngine Library

Hi there, i'm interested in the AndEngine library being ported to Basic4Android, is this something you would be willing to look at, if so let me know and we can talk further

cheers,
Walter

Tom Christman said:

With all due respect to XverhelstX who, as he has indicated, is a college student looking for ways of funding his future endeavors, I'm a bit concerned about the "slippery slope" effect of proposing development of libraries for B4A for a fee.

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XverhelstX is not starting a new trend. Some of us are contacted by PM to be hired or simply paid in exchange of a library. That's not public because there's no reason to make it public. And maybe A. Grahams, M. Pearmans or A. Bailleuls do this as a full-time job now. Who knows? Some of us are well paid by a company (that's my case) so they do not really need money and can provide libraries or classes for free, but others may need to feed their family or to pay the house or the car. Even when you're hired, the times can become hard when your wife loses her job (that's my case). So a little bit of money is not overlooked.
Personally, I'm not at all against someone advertising he is in such a need.

Here's another thought on the subject...

Let's say client X pays me to develop library Y.

If client X allows me to subsequently upload library Y to the forum and make it available for free to all forum members then as time goes by inevitably the library will have bugs fixed and be updated to add new features - all for free.
Client X and all forum members benefit.

If however client X doesn't want me to upload library Y then i'll only be obliged to fix any library bugs for free.
And if client X wants an update - a new feature - i'll charge him for my time.
Straightforward freelance business model - the client gains nothing from not allowing me to make the library available for free to forum members.

Martin.

warwound said:

Straightforward freelance business model - the client gains nothing from not allowing me to make the library available for free to forum members.

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He gains exclusivity (atleast in B4A community), that no one else can compete with him in the same features.

However, lets say Client Z, comes along to you, unknowingly, asks you to develop the SAME library. Where do you stand now? Do you turn him away, because of Client X, and potentially lose out on work you have already done? Does Client Z never get that feature?

Good point!

It's all swings and roundabouts.

Martin.

Again, I think selling license is the best. You sell your library for $1 and you can have 1000 users or you sell it $1000 but you have only 1 user.

We can discuss at length about these things, but most of the time you don't argue a lot with your customers about the benefits of a model against another. They are the guys who pay, thus they have the final word. If your customer wants a library for his exclusive use, you do a library for his exclusive use. You're fortunate if he changes his mind on that point.

Guys and Gals,

If a developer develops a library from scratch and put their time and effort into writing, debuging and testing the library then they should be paid for their efforts. If a library saves you hours/Days of work, is it not worth the small amount of money you have to pay for it ? If we are then selling on the apps to a customer(s) and we are getting paid for our efforts then it is only fair the Library developer gets paid also.


If on the other hand a Community member takes an existing library in the common domain and wraps it for use with B4A and its for the good of the community then it should be put up on the site. If you want to send the Developer the price of a Pint/ 500mls of Beer (Small Donation) then do that.

These libraries are offered under the Appache 2.0 License and have no warranty and are offered 'As Is'.

I have only developed/wrapped one library for B4a (BCrypt) and it was a direct port from the original Developer. I will be loading it up to the site as 'Pay Back' for all of the useful Libraries and Code I have received from other forum members. I will if I manage to port other libraries will post them on the forum also. I am not looking for Donations !!!!!!

Once again thanks to all those forum members as mentioned in Tom Christman post above (and Erel of course ) for all their time and effort in making B4A a fabulous Development tool.

This is just my 2 cents worth also.

Regards

BOB

Well i'm currently developing a couple of libraries for forum members.

As i complete each library i'll discuss with the client whether or not they have any objections to making the library freely available to other forum members and point them to this thread to help them make up their mind.

It'd be a shame for other forum members not to get the chance to use these libraries but business is business and money talks!

Martin.

warwound said:

It'd be a shame for other forum members not to get the chance to use these libraries but business is business and money talks!

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I'm surprised you are giving away rights to your code, but if they are paying that much :sign0027:

hdtvirl said:

If on the other hand a Community member takes an existing library in the common domain and wraps it for use with B4A and its for the good of the community then it should be put up on the site. If you want to send the Developer the price of a Pint/ 500mls of Beer (Small Donation) then do that.

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No, no and no. Some wrappers are not easy to do. And the fact that the original library is free does not mean the developper who ports it to B4A doesn't do a lot of work. My ScrollView2D library is "just" a merge of a VerticalScrollView and a HorizontalScrollView. However, it needed one full week, 8 hours a day, to make it work as expected, because the original libraries have many flaws (I can even say "bugs" since I fixed two of them) and are not designed to be merged. My ScrollView2D is a better library than the standard ScrollView provided by Google.
It's up to the developper to decide if he wants to be payed, not to the leechers who forget most of the time to say simply "thank you" (I don't write that about you ).

Informatix said:

It's up to the developper to decide if he wants to be payed, not to ...

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That is exactly my point. Developer should be king! He should set the price/license depending on the lib and how many people he will estimate will need it.

1000 customers*1$>2 customers*100$

http://www.b4x.com/forum/images/smilies/sign0100.gif

Informatix, I agree with all you have said and really I should have made myself clear on the 'just a wrapper' for Libraries in the Common Domain, I was talking about taking 'Low Hanging Fruit' libraries and wrapping them not spending Hours/Days/Weeks developing them. BCrypt was one in point, I did not really do anything to it except add an extra method to the Library and compile it for Android, someone wanted it and I could do it and they got it. It is there for any other member who has a use for it.
Another user has written a small demo to use the BCrypt Library for Salting passwords to send over to a webservice. The library comes 'As Is' with no warranties as per the original Author.


I have looked into porting/Wrapping some other libraries and I must admit they have been quite daunting and made me think twice about doing them. (aChartEngine for one).


It has been great that the Library Developers have shared their hard work with all of us.

Some very good points have been made by the other contributors to this Thread about what way it should be handled. I think we can all agree on 'One size does not fit all' !.

Regards

BOB

I dont mind paying for anything of value.

The price is extremely cheap compared to my time and effort trying to create the same - of which I could not.

Simple wrap or not, they are all valuable to the user in search of specific functionality. Espeically those bits that don't exist in B4A as standard libs (ie. XX PDF lib).

My take (2 cents): I don't mind paying/donate (a nominal fee) for your hard work. No one is ever going to get rich on this, but a pat on the back helps with motivation. Spread the luv....

Like said before - if not for the community of support, this (Erel's) project would die. However, very many people agree that this platform works. Let us continue this support through rewarding those who openly ask (and not) for thier fine work... They deserve it - contributing is effortless....

You could also use Chip In that way the whole community could drop a couple of bucks to keep you motivated, everyone wins.

NJDude said:

You could also use Chip In that way the whole community could drop a couple of bucks to keep you motivated, everyone wins.

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great idea!

NJDude said:

You could also use Chip In that way the whole community could drop a couple of bucks to keep you motivated, everyone wins.

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+1